to mouth, merely committed to memory, and was at last lost and
changed into the many ridiculous notions and strange practices said
to have been consigned afterward to these writings.

Withal the knowledge of reading those books was retained by some of
the descendants of the _H-Menes_. I would not take upon myself to
assert positively that some of the inhabitants of Peten--the place
where the Itzas took refuge at the beginning of the Christian era
after the destruction of their city--are not still in possession of
the secret. At all events, I was told that people who could read
the Maya _pic-huun_ (books), and to whom the deciphering of the
_Uooh_ (letters) and the figurative characters was known, existed
as far back as forty years ago, but kept their knowledge a secret,
lest they should be persecuted by the priests as wizards and their
precious volume wrenched from them and destroyed. The Indians hold
them yet in great veneration. I am ready to give full credit to
this assertion, for during my rambles and explorations in Peru and
Bolivia I was repeatedly informed that people existed ensconced in
remote nooks of the Andes, who could interpret the _quippus_
(string writing) and yet made use of them to register their family
records, keep account of their droves of llamas and other
property.

I will not speak here at length of the monuments of Peru, that
during eight years I have diligently explored; for, with but few
exceptions, they dwindle into insignificance when compared with the
majestic structures reared by the Mayas, the Caras, or Carians, and
other nations of Central America, and become, therefore, devoid of
interest in point of architecture and antiquity; excepting,
however, the ruins of Tiahuanaco, that were already ruins at the
time of the foundation of the Incas' empire, in the eleventh
century of our era, and so old that the memory of the builders was
lost in the abysm of time. The Indians used to say that these were
the work of giants who lived _before the sun shone in the heavens_.
It is well known that the Incas had no writing characters or
hieroglyphics. The monuments raised by their hands do not afford
any clew to their history. Dumb walls merely, their mutism leaves
large scope to imagination, and one may conjecture any but t